If you’ve been a Christian for any significant period of time, you’ve heard someone talk about grace, and about God’s graciousness. In fact, it’s possible you’ve heard grace referred to so frequently that you might think that it’s another buzzword or internal speak among Christians. But this word, and what it means, is absolutely essential to the Christian life. 

Grace refers to God’s unmerited and undeserved favor toward human beings. And those words “undeserved,” or “unmerited” are really important because they speak to our spiritual condition. All people have turned our backs on God. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We deny His existence, and rebel against Him at every opportunity. 

We don’t deserve God’s kindness. We don’t deserve His favor. Instead, because of our sin, we only deserve one thing, which is death.

Yet, God delights to show unmerited favor, or grace, to undeserving people… which is to say to all people. He graciously makes the sun shine, and the rains fall. He graciously holds the entire universe together. And more incredibly, rather than leaving us to face the consequences of our sin without hope, He shows His grace to humanity in this way: by sending His one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

The death and resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate display of God’s graciousness, forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with God, freely given to all who put their trust in Him.